US and Iran step up tit-for-tat attacks, Israel continues Lebanon campaign

(Originally published June 3 in “What in the World‘) Ceasefire? More like increase-fire.

Iran launched several missiles Tuesday towards targets in Bahrain and Kuwait, all of which the U.S. military said it intercepted, then responded by launching strikes against Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel, meanwhile, on Tuesday continued strikes against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon, with its drones killing at least 11 people. It did, however, refrain from launching further attacks in Beirut as part of an agreement (let’s not make the mistake of calling it a “ceasefire”) brokered by Trump.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on Monday blasted a container ship leaving an Iraqi port as retaliation for U.S. strikes last Friday against an Iranian cargo ship that was trying to reach Iran from the Gulf of Oman. This exchange was apparently all taking place as Iranian forces shot down a U.S. drone, which prompted the U.S. to bomb Iranian drone and radar sites, which Iran responded to by firing two missiles at American forces in Kuwait, both of which were intercepted.

News of the expanding attacks sent oil’s benchmark price up more than 1% Wednesday. Brent crude futures climbed 1.1% to just above $97 a barrel.

Iran’s persistent antagonism belies Trump’s claims that its military has been emasculated, much less destroyed. It also suggests that Tehran isn’t as desperate as some thought to placate Trump with a deal to lift his blockade of Iran’s oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz and restore its economic lifeblood. On the contrary, as Texas A&M University Associate Professor and Rice University fellow Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar posits in Foreign Affairs, Iran has deduced that the status quo—with it holding the West (and by extension Israel), and its Arab enemies at bay over oil exports—is exactly where it wants to be:

“Iran has concluded that conflict is preferable to diplomacy. The war, after all, seems to be helping Tehran increase its international power. By striking Arab states that host American bases, Iran has succeeded in driving a wedge between U.S. officials and their Persian Gulf partners, who desperately want a lasting settlement. By closing the Strait of Hormuz, it has forced a collection of countries around the planet to acknowledge its power and negotiate over the fate of their ships…. The Islamic Republic’s strategy, then, is not merely to survive and outlast the United States… Instead, it wants to fundamentally alter how Tehran is dealt with by the United States, U.S. allies, and indeed, the wider world. It aspires to be a pole in a multipolar order, and it believes that the war is helping it achieve that goal.”